The week will also include a few other events outside of the normal daily sessions, one of which is the Unconference happening just after the last session each day. Keith Casey of Blue Parabola organized this year's event. With the help of the Joind.in site and some community involvement, he's set up some great sessions to compliment each of the day's normal sessions. I asked Keith what he felt was the real goal behind the Unconference and how to make it really work.

"The vital - and therefore most difficult - part of an unconference is getting the word out. First, people need to know it's happening. Then they need to know how to participate both in the pitching and voting of sessions [and] they need to know which session is happening where." In his opinion, though, the real key to a successful unconfernece is to make the connection between the people with something to say and the ones that want to hear it.

None of this would come together without the hard work of others "behind the scenes" handling things like reservations at the hotel, setting up special need for the speakers and coordinating with the staff to make sure things run smoothly during the week. One member of this team is Elizabeth Naramore. She's spent the last few months coordinating things to to make the week flow as smooth as possible. Elizabeth noted that, despite still working out the last minute details, they're "really excited about hosting this year's conference. We have brilliant speakers and some great social events planned, along with a few surprises, just to keep everyone on their toes."

If you're haven't registered yet, there's still time! The conference begins next Tuesday with the Tutorials day and goes through Friday at lunch with regular and Unconference sessions. You can still register on the php|tek website if you'd like to attend but you have to be fast - since the conference is next week, you have to sign up before the end of this week!

After long wait, we've finally gotten things together and have slides and some of the video available for the php|tek webcast series.

Presentations posted so far include Keith Casey's look at project management, Matthew Turland's web scraping talk and, most recently, Tony Bibbs' look at using Propel.

You can find out more about the webcasts (and sign up for upcoming ones) on this page from the php|tek website. There's still time to register for today's event - the second part of the "PHP and Flash" series from Lee Brimelow.

February is usually when the many fun and interesting activities that surround our spring conference php|tek start taking place - and this year is no exception. In fact, this year that are more people working - hellbent might be a better word, given their enthusiasm - on making |tek a memorable occasion for PHP developers from all over the world to meet up, learn and network.

The three events/happenings he mentions are the keynote being given by Andrei Zmievski (Open Source Fellow at Digg), the webcast/unconference being organized by Keith Casey and the Hackathon being put together by Matthew Turland (both of Blue Parabola).

You can get more information on what sort of talks will be happening and how you can reserve your spot on the main conference website.

As we all wait for php|tek to arrive, join us for a series of free webcasts! Discover new topics, learn from your favourite authors and enjoy chatting with your fellow PHPers'"and all completely free of charge, including exclusive access to Marco Tabini's opening keynote at php|tek 2009! Each webcast features an interactive look at a technology, technique or topic that is relevant to the world of PHP and web programming'"and is completely open and free to everyone.

Tomorrow's webcast is presented by Keith Casey and will look at time and project management with the web2project software. You can reserve your spot here.

Webcasts will be held roughly every two weeks leading up to the beginning of the conference. I'm scheduled for Friday February 27 at 1 PM EST and my topic will be "When RSS Fails: Web Scraping with HTTP." Participation is free, but the number of participants is limited, so register early. Note that participation requires a machine running either Windows XP or higher or MacOS X 10.4 or higher. Look forward to seeing you there!

The first webcast is happening on January 23rd and will be a look at time and project managment with the Web2Project product by Keith Casey. Other topics include web accessibility, using Propel, application security and Zend Framework/Dojo integration.

Check out the webcast series page for more information and to signup.

Think you might like for a Hackathon to be included in the Unconference? (Or want to know more about what such an event would entail?)

If you'd like to get in on the discussion, there's already a Google group set up that you can join to keep up with the latest. The group just started up , so there's not a whole lot of content there yet so go over any voice your opinion on the matter. Oh, and if you're looking for a quick and easy URL that'll get you there, use http://tinyurl.com/tek09hackathon.

Topics this time include the breaking of the HD DVD key, cross-site request forgeries, a discussion of various editors and much more. The podcast was recorded at this year's php|tek conference put on by php|architect

As always, you can either grab this latest show directly or you can subscribe to their podcast feed to get the latest shows delivered right to your podcasting client.

• php|tek (in Chicago)
• eLiberatica (in Romania)
• OSCON (in Oregon

He's also included brief summaries of what each is about for you to pick out which you might want to attend. In the comments of the post, he mentions yet another conference (just passed unfortunately) for UKers - the PHPConference UK.

There's also mention of another article, "Streamline working with XML in PHP using Service Data Objects", that talks some about SDO close to the end, a look at the merging of XML and SDO. Also, if you're interested in contributing to the SDO project, there's a COntributor License Agreement that you'll need to go through to get into the project.

There's also a comment made about the Call for Papers for php|architect's next conference later in the year.